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As it seems you haven't had the chance to edit since bobandbill's post, I've kept that in mind in this review, don't worry. x3 No one needs the same things tossed at them.

The first thing I've noticed so far is a lack of variety in sentence structure. Bob mentioned it in description- I'm highlighting this in a general way, with the introduction in particular.

Alakazam was bored. Yet another annual conference to travel to. Only 30 minutes to travel over 5,000 miles for the annual meeting between the leaders from every species of Pokemon. Alakazam shut his eyes and held up his spoons. He twisted them to the right, then back to the left. He vanished.

The most common sentence we have here is the short, simple sentence, using the same tense and only occasionally broken up with a comma - all a list. Even the '30,000 miles' sentence is basically the same as the others, except there are more words in it. If you mixed this up a little more with other punctuation and different sentence structures, it could spruce this bit a little bit more.

The first section seems a little pointless, as well, as there simply isn't much there. It is the first time we see the main character, but he gets no formal introduction, no detail on his past, no particular description; nothing except a look at his thoughts and a knowledge that he has somewhere else to go, a place he goes to immediately. In the next scene you give us similar information on his personality that we got in the first part, through continuing to expose us to his thoughts, which would be the only use of the first scene - and there is actually much more in the second scene that goes to reintroduce and explain more about the meeting, introduce us to other characters and more to the main character himself. The only information we get from this first clip is that he finds it a hassle that he has to go to this meeting because of the distance. We get nothing on why he is such a distance away, or the significance of this (aka that this is both his home and a lake, as you do eventually tell us in the next scene) and therefore the distance seems irrelevant. His displeasure at having to travel to the meeting can be set across upon his arrival at the place.

Therefore what is the point of the first part?

...I don't mean to seem harsh, I just wanted to impress how little there is in the scene. You see, it really has the opportunity to provide more. You can use the scene to introduce his lake, which as his home I'm assuming is important unless he never returns to it, of course, in which case you could use this to introduce him a little more. You can learn a lot more about someone when they are in a setting they find comfortable, such as their home, then you can in an alien place, and I feel you could take advantage of that. You can even introduce how you intend to portray Pokemon in this 'fic, because it's evident that you are diverging from the Canon. x3 I know you intend this to be a comedy, and therefore need to keep this 'fic light, but there are still ways of incorporating detail into a breezy writing style, and besides, this scene is already not comedic, so you won't be dampening any jokes by expanding a little. It'll just give it a little more. :3

Be careful how you expand them though, mm? I would like to stress this now because, as bob mentioned, you've begun to fall into listing throughout your 'fic, not just at the beginning. When I say expand, be careful not to just list the details I've mentioned you missed, but vary it up a little. There is nothing that says you have to provide all of the information in one go. If you feel you have to, however, try and vary the sentence structure, and the techniques you use. For examples, look below.

The room was enormous, although short. It had blue carpet and a low, stone ceiling painted like the night sky. The furret gasped at the sight of it. Against the walls there were two oblong chairs and a round sofa placed randomly.

This can be transformed easily with using a couple different techniques and mixing longer and shorter sentences, with the use of the continuous tense as well as just the past to give a little more spice to your comma usage.

The room was enormous despite being curiously short, its carpet stretching out beyond them like the wash of a tropical ocean, breaking around the pieces of furniture that were left haphazardly against the walls like abandoned pieces of driftwood. It was not that that'd caught the furret's attention, however. Her gaze was fixed on the ceiling, her eyes wide as they drank in the carefully painted detail. Someone, an artist of some sort, she swore, had dedicated hours to recreating the image of a fogged night sky on the stone surface..."

Same room, same information. Mine takes longer to say the same things, yes, but which one is more interesting? It is not about how much description, it's about how you phrase it. The paragraph isn't much longer then it was before.

The changes:

Metaphors. I used a metaphor to describe the carpet, through comparing it with the sea. In this way I gave the information on the carpet's colour. I then continued this metaphor to provide the information on the furniture, through having the ocean image I'd just created move and 'break' as a wave does against the furniture. Silly, but effective.

Similies. I continued the sea imagery by using a similie, comparing their placement as 'like [that of] abandoned driftwood'.

Character. I made use of a character I had in the room, one who had presumably just entered it, to finish the description. The nice thing about third person, limited or omniscient, is that you have the ability to use the character's thoughts to reveal something to the reader. In this case, I am using the character's fascination with the ceiling to describe it, pointing out elements that she is noticing. This is a trickier technique to understand and use - at least I'm finding it really hard to describe, haha. It's just another option.

One more option before I zip it on this subject is something I didn't include in the one above, and that is personification of a force such as sunlight or the wind. In this case, you use the 'movement' of such a thing to describe a setting or object- having sunlight cascade down a rocky hilltop towards the sleepy suburbs of a city, for example, and other such things.

Sentence structure: Long sentence, with three different parts. Two short sentences. Another long one.

Basically, there are lots of options - metaphors and similies are some of the easiest when it comes to techniques, and then there is the sentence structure. Play around a little!

I did end up discussing description in the end, my apologies. xD; I'll leave this as it is for now.

On your characters: This, at least, is a much happier story. :3 I join the ranks of those who liked your combees - who can't love the hive mind? - and your main character really has endeared himself to me. x3 He seems like a sweet character. I quite liked the conversation between him and Gardevoir when they figured out the truth of that past event, that was nice conversation, and I like your dear Gallade, although I feel like I haven't seen much of him yet. :3 Poor isolated Darkrai.

The sudden egg scene was classic - it came completely out of the left field, and I'm quite interested in seeing how it all turns out. :3 I wasn't very fond of the fact that Alkazam turned to Gardevoir and ordered her to guard it, however, the minute danger came - the feminist in me was a little perturbed - but I'll let it go this time, haha. x3 She's a strong character - and she and Alakazam seem lovely together, haha. x3 Violence and motherly instincts = <3.

Your introduction of Kyogre and Groudon was very amusing, great job - I'm looking forward to seeing more from them.

Plot wise, I hate to regurgitate, but it is indeed very original, I've enjoyed it. x3 Particularly the egg twist - it caught me unawares, haha. Well done with that. There isn't much I can say, really, except that for a first time 'fic writer, you've done well. :3 I will certainly be keeping an eye on this. There is room for improvement, but everyone has things to work on. Good job. <3

Last edited by katiekitten; 1st September 2011 at 3:09 PM.

Floating over your rocky spine
The glaciers made you and now you're mine

Before I say anything else, I am putting this fic on a short-term hiatus. I have much editing to do, plus plotholes to fix. This takes a lot of time. If this lasts more than two months, I will open a new thread for this fic as a revival, with all (hopefully) plotholes and grammatical stuff fixed. In the meantime, I'm going to work on my Drabble thread when I feel like taking a break from fixing this. Thank you for understanding. I will respond to katiekitten's review when I have more time.

This is a review exchange review.Fics: System of Variables (sig). Due to insane length, the first entry or two will suffice for reviewing your fic if it is indeed still roughly 5K words. If you want to review all 20K+ words of my fic, go ahead, but you don't have to. Review Wanted: Anything really. Fire away.

Alrighty then. Not sure if you're still accepting reviews, but you were still listed as open, and I was going to review it anyways... but my computer deleted my reply after I'd went through all of the effort to type it out. Yeah, sucks. Enough of that, onto the review.

I, like just about every reviewer before me, found the concept very interesting and original. I can also see the use of a conference system to an extent. As for positives: the characterization is pretty good, particulary in the beginning. The backstories proved to be interesting and workable in the vast majority of cases, which added something. I feel like you may have tipped your hand a bit early on some of the backstory information, particularly Gardevoir's, but it still worked. I just think you might be able to keep more suspense going if you leave it open for a chapter or two after Gardevoir's character is introduced if you rewrote it, but to each his own.

Arceus' bipolar state is surprisingly understandable. I mean, he only has to keep a bunch of fueding legendary Pokemon with the power to destroy humanity from doing just that, make sure the random ten year-olds with the ability to combat champions and legendary Pokemon don't do anything too stupid, and then deal with all of the random syndicates. It's hardly a stressful job at all.

The criminal super alliance really made me raise an eyebrow... or both. The fact is: most of the syndicates hate each other more than the game protagonists. Cyrus views them all as worthless for trying to change an imperfect world that is beyond repair. Ghestis wants all of them to release their Pokemon so he can reign supreme. Snagem and Cypher, as well as Aqua and Magma, are out for each other's throats after the events of XD and their foundings respectively. Rocket would be the only team for whom your explanation believably works. You would have to do some serious manipulation for me to even remotely believe that this could happen, but it might be doable.

As for the one thing that got me hard... I have a theory. I call it literary whiplash. The basis is that contrast is good, but too much contrast will just throw reader's off. You got very close to that point during the egg sequence in particular. I could fully deal with that if the entire fic had been some dark tragedy, or at least moderately deep. For the first half of your story, it is never particularly far from a joke or comedy sequence. And then you throw in an extremely adult theme from the middle of nowhere and BAM I get mildly thrown off and disturbed. Hopefully you get my point. The contrast in tones and themes is very, very large in a rather short amount of time, making readers more likely to be put off. I'm just saying that when reading through a PG rated Pseudo-comedy, I absolutely did not expect that. And not in a good way. Just make sure your tone and themes stay fairly consistent, or change with reasonable time for readers to adjust.

Oh, and hive mind is really creepy any way it's put, but yours was possibly creepier than most interpretations I've seen. Props on that. Oh, and can Durant and Combee even have a species leader, as they arguably lack any form of sentience? Does a Vespiqueen and Queen Durant hold those roles instead?

Oh well, long review is long. tl;dr watch out for excessive contrast, characterization and humor was pretty good, nice original fic overall.

Thanks for the review! While this is still technically active it's on long-term hiatus...

Anyway, thanks for the positive stuff about characterization. It always helps to know that I do something right!

About the crime syndicates... I had a plan, but now that the fic is on hiatus it got pushed to the side...

The literary whiplash: I originally wrote this to be a drama, but I felt bored with it, so I changed it to a pseudo-comedy in the middle. Not a good idea, I guess. Also, the fic is rated PG-13, not PG, which is why you may have shocked with some of the themes. I edited the first post a while back, because it was originally PG.

The Hive Mind: That could be the most positively received topic I've ever gotten reviewed on. ^_^ And as for Durant and Combee having species leaders............. GAH! Not another plothole! Grrrr... more stuff I have to fix.

Once again, thanks for the review. I'm a little slow on getting back to reviewing fics as many people will tell you, but I'll get to it... you are 4th on my waiting list, lol.